NAACP Lawsuit Accuses Trump Voter Commission Of Racial Discrimination

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday, claims Trump's commission is disenfranchising and intimidating people of color.

Alawsuit filed Tuesday by the NAACP claims President Donald Trump‘s controversial voter fraud commission is motivated by racial discrimination against voters of color, the New York Daily News reports.

The suit, filed in Manhattan Federal Court Tuesday, said that the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity is working to disenfranchise and intimidate people of color. Trump launched the commission through an executive order on May 11 designed to investigate his unsubstantiated allegations of electoral misconduct.

So far, the group has requested that every state turn over extensive personal information on voters, the report says. But the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and Ordinary People Society, another national civil rights group, will not tolerate an illegal investigation and attempts at voter suppression.

Both civil rights groups are seeking to stop the commission from comparing voter rolls to a list of non-citizens provided by the Department of Homeland Security.

“That process, however, is not a reliable method to identify voter fraud, and it is likely to generate numerous false positives, with a disproportionate impact on voters of color,” the suit says.

Trump’s repeated and unsubstantiated claims that millions of illegal immigrants voted in the 2016 election are stated in the suit, The Washington Post reports. The suit alleges that Trump and his commission’s statements are “grounded on the false premise that Black and Latino voters are more likely to perpetrate voter fraud.”

The NAACP lawsuit is the latest in at least seven other suits against Trump’s commission. Several separate challenges have been filed by groups in Indiana, New Hampshire and Idaho, the Post reports.